| Research in the field of intercultural communication studies has revealed thatdifferent cultures tend to have different preferential patterns in discourse (Kaplan1966, Scollon/ Scollon/ Kirkpatrick 2000, Chen Jianping 2005) . With regard to thetext differences across cultures, different studies have adopted different approaches intheir research. Due to the influence of the political system that permeates every cornerof a society, this study is an attempt to explore the relationship betweensocial-political environment and discourse through a comparative analysis of thestructural differences between Chinese and German public promotional discourse.The reserch data will be based on one specific aspect of discourse, i.e., theintroduction sections of the Brochures used by Chinese and German Enterprises forpublic promotional purposes. Critical discourse analysis (van Dijk 1995, Fairclough1992, 2001, J(a|¨)ger 1993 ) and German content grammar research (Weisgerber1949/1950) have suggested that there is an interrelatedness between political systemand discourse. However, previous studies have focus their attention on revealingpower and social relations in discourse. The present study therefore attempts to lookat another dimension, a comparison of the structural differences in Chinese andGerman promotional discourse from the perspective of political grammar, atheoretical notion that will be explored in the study for an explanation of thecross-cultural differences.Three related research questions are asked: What are the structural differences inthe Chinese and German promotional discourse? What social-political meaning arereflected in these structural differences? What political-grammatical characteristicsare represented in these structural differences in the Chinese vs. Germansocial-political context respectively? The theoretical framework of the research isbased on the theory of systemic functional grammar, which attempts to interpretlanguage (text) in communication and the relation between language use and its socialcontext. Here, language is considered as a meaning system, creating three kinds of discourse meanings: ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaningat the different levels of discourse. To probe into the discourse, the functionalanalytical framework is considered in this study the most appropriate approach for theanalysis of the three kinds of discourse meanings and the futher exploration of thedevelopment of meanings in different social-cultural contexts.With reference to the analytical framework adapted from systemic functionalgrammar, the study starts with the analysis of language structures for their discoursemeaning. To be more specifically, it makes a contrastive analysis of the structures atdifferent levels of the texts, clauses and words based on the promotional discoursechosen from the introduction texts of Chinese and German enterprises. Furthercontrastive analysis was conducted on the different structural types of the Chinese andGerman discourse that reveal the political ideational meaning and interpersonalpolitical meaning in the two social contexts respectively.As for the analytical methods, the study adopts the effective generic potentialanalysis, transitive analysis and evaluative analysis methods deriving from thesystemic functional linguistics. The generic potential analysis aims at discussing theformal schema and content schema of the Chinese and German introduction texts. Thetransitive analysis is to analyze the aspects of participants, target and circumstancewhere utterances are expressed. It mainly focuses on the relationship between theparticipants, the activities that the participants take part in and the environments andcontents involved. Therefore, its aim is to understand and analyze the politicalcontents in the text. In terms of the evaluative analysis, it does not only evaluates theauthor's attitude, others' act and events, but also finds out the social relation that theauthor tries to establish under the influence of the political environment. Both thetransitive analysis and the evaluative analysis are involved at the two levels ofanalysis - clausal structure and word choice.The results of the analysis show that the differences of formal structure directlylead to the semantic discrepancies. From the textual aspect, Chinese text and Germantext represent different contents. Chinese text highlights political-environmentalfactors and emphasizes national policies and instructive behavior of the higher authorities in the initial position. It is only in the middle position where it begins aself-introduction of the conditions of the enterprises, such as the products and itsservices. Then in the ending position, the text recalls the context of the initial positionto present the responsibilities and determinations of enterprises. However, Germantext narrates the products and services of enterprises in the front part and restate thecontent again in the final part, emphasizing what the enterprises will do for thebenefits of the customers. At the textual level, the different contents of the texts alsoshow different organizing forms that reflect different interpersonal relationship ofpolitics. Chinese text focuses on the leading role of higher authorities in the initialposition and in the ending position it shows the enterprises' willingness to be inobedience, while in German text, it attaches great importance to the establishment of amutual-benefit relationship and forms the cause-effect relation by describing "whatyour enterprises have done just for your service" , in order to establish reliablerelationships with the customer.On the clausal level, there are differences of establishing participants'relationship in the position of the component parts between Chinese and German texts.In Chinese text, the typical structures of conditional adverbial clauses are at thebeginning of a sentence, which contains the guide of the national policies and thecontent of the higher authorities, for example, with phrases like "under the leadershipof the Party". In German text, other typical structures are involved. There is anindirect object that is customer, who is a benefited participant. Two different formalstructures of the clauses show that Chinese clauses establish the higher and lowerrelationship between higher authorities and enterprises, while German clausesestablish the relationship of serving others and being served.As for the use of tenses, there are also differences between the two languages. Inthe Chinese texts, the words used for expressing future meanings are always put at theend of the clause to convey the author's desire of constructing an ideal society. But inthe German texts, the present tense is only used to show what the close attention ispaid to maintain the present relation and situation. Overall, both textual and clausal structures reflect different discourse meaningsin Chinese and German, that is to say, the two text groups have accomplishedinterpersonal function and ideational function by means of their discourse structures.In the Chinese text, the textual structure and clausal structure show that the actperformed by the national leaders have great influence on enterprises. Thegovernment formulates the national polices which should be followed and carried outby the enterprises. However, the textual and clausal structures in German text only setup the relationship between the enterprises which make profits for customers and thecustomers who are benefited. In addition, the Chinese text also conveys the desire forthe future development.On the word level, it has been revealed that language elements have an effect onthe formation of discourse meaning. In fact, the differences derived from the wordmeanings and rhetoric elements parrallel with the differences of the textual andclausal structures. Meanwhile, from the aspects of political concept and interpersonalmeaning, the meanings of the textual and clausal structures are also discussed. Forinstance, the research results show that the act performed by "the higher leaders" andthe polices formulated by "them" are often the guide of the "enterprises" in theChinese text, which is also reflected by semantic meaning and rhetoric meaning. Firstof all, the rhetoric device "quotation" is adopted in Chinese discourse. For example,the quotations like "the leader's speech" or "state policies and principles" are put intothe text. Among them, the frequently quoted policies and principles are the "scientificconcepts of development", together with other similar words or phrases such as"scientific development", and "development strategy", "leap-forward development"and so on. Thus, the "quotations" represent that the enterprises are subordinate to thehigher authorities. The quoted word meanings like "development" also constitute thetheme and content of the discourse, as is called ideational meaning. Meanwhile, thequasi-fixed phrases that are consistent with the structure form aim at highlighting thatthe quotations "state policies and principles" and "orders from higher authorities" arecentered on the theme "development". More importantly, the consistency in form not only highlights the content but also makes the language persuadable, whichstrengthens the tone of the order.From the above brief summary of the research results, it appears that theideational meaning in the Chinese text can be observed in the structures to reflect "thepolicies formulated by the state government and the policies obeyed and carried outby the enterprises" as well as the interpersonal political meaning like " the actperformed by the leaders in the form of the state authorities gives an impact on theenterprises". In the German text, the structures of the texts, clauses and words reflecta kind of interpersonal political relation and ideational meaning, for example, "theenterprises make profits for the customers and the customers are benefited from whatthe enterprises have done". All these structures are corresponding with the politicalmeaning, which can be called the political grammar, which is the key factor thatexplains the differences in discourse structures across the two cultures.Langugage structures are used to serve specific discourse functions. That is tosay, language use often aims at describing and constructing the world and willcertainly have influence on the communicative subjects or the coordination with theoutside world. Through the comparison of the discourses across the two cultures, itcan be seen that different language systems have different political grammarsrepresented by the differences in textual structures and their construction of differentdiscourse meanings. This also means that the differences between Chinese andGerman discourses reflect different political grammars through which thesocial-political meanings of the specific culture are realized by a set of structures indiscourse. In other words, the two kinds of discourses reflect different politicalsystems between the two countries, as the differences of the structures and theconstructed discourse themes and contents indicate typical political characteristics ofthe two cultures and coincide with the political systems of the two countries.This study is of certain realistic significance, for it tends to prove that politicalgrammar is a sociolinguistic phenomenon existing in every language. Besides, wehave also found that the two kinds of the text structures and discourse featurescoincide with the social-political system of each respective country, showing that in the process of language use, the politics of a culture deeply influences people'sthoughts and act at every levels of discourse. Accordingly, this study on politicalgrammar, to some degree, also carry important theoretical significance and practicalvalue for foreign language teaching and translation research. Foreign languageteaching and translation activities cannot remain at the level of language grammar orthe correctness of contents. It is highly important to have a better understanding of theprofound social meanings in language structures in discourse.However, there are also limitations in the study. For example, the researchproject has not been able to conduct a more extensive study covering more areas ofdiscourse to find out more specific structures that are corresponding to specific socialpolitical meaning in different social contexts. It is also desireable to conduct furtherinvestigation based on data from questionnaires and interviews in order to find out thepolitical orientation of employees of the enterprises from the two different cultures.This remains our motivation for further research in the future.
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